Here's Why You Should Care That Beer Will Have Nutrition Labels

Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors, HeinekenUSA, Constellation Brands Beer Division, North American Breweries and Craft Brew Alliance are major beer brewers that agreed to display nutrition information about their products. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Have you ever wondered how many calories and how much carbohydrates, protein, fat and alcohol is in your beer? Well, now you may know. The Beer Institute has announced the Brewers’ Voluntary Disclosure Initiative, which encourages its member companies to list the calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat and alcohol by volume in its products either on the product packaging or websites.

Some of you may be thinking, "Beer Institute? Where do I go and how do I sign up?" No, The Beer Institute is not a school for beer drinking. Instead, it is a national trade organization based in Washington, D.C., that represents the American beer brewing industry. As you can imagine, the beer industry is not small. According to the Brewer's Almanac, produced by the Beer Institute, the United States produced 196 million barrels of beer in 2012. That's a lot of barrels of beer on the wall. More than 3,000 breweries exist in the United States. And according to a Beer Institute report, the beer industry in 2014 contributed $252.6 billion to the U.S. economy. Use that the next time you want to justify your game of flip cup or beer pong.

Thus, the Brewers’ Voluntary Disclosure Initiative is not insignificant. The Initiative calls for beer brewers to phase in the labeling by 2020. According to the Beer Institute, a number of Beer Institute members, such as Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors, HeinekenUSA,
Constellation Brands Beer Division, North American Breweries and Craft Brew Alliance, have already agreed to follow the Initiative, which means you may be seeing a lot more labeling, because these companies produce more than 81% of the volume of beer sold in the U.S. Of course, it is still voluntary...hence the name. Once the big brewers implement the changes, others could follow suit. Although testing beer for nutritional content is not a simple operation and not something that smaller brewers with fewer resources may necessarily want to do...even though some of you may want to volunteer.

You may ask, do beer drinkers really care to know what's in their beer? What's the point of listing fat when beer has no fat? Skeptics may say that this is just be a precursor to an ad campaign for beer as a non-fat beverage. Furthermore, will someone really choose a beer because of protein content? Achieving your recommended daily protein intake just with beer would require drinking over 33 cans of beer a day. (Note: This in no way advocates drinking over 33 cans of beer a day.)

Well, a Harris Poll of 1,978 U.S. adults surveyed online between May 24 and 26, 2016 did reveal that over 70% of beer drinkers read nutrition labels in general. Moreover, calories, carbohydrates and alcohol content could be of interest to beer drinkers...especially those counting calories. Beer drinkers span a wide spectrum of habits, ranging from the "only on special occasions" drinker to the "every single minute is a special occasion" drinker with many variations between these two extremes. If you drink beer frequently enough, differences in calories, carbohydrates and alcohol content among brands could have an impact on your health.

The Initiative also further opens the discussion about how to improve beer from a health standpoint. While beer has not been typically cast as a health food such as kale, there's no denying that beer plays a role in many Americans' diets, and some have even argued that beer has antioxidants and can improve cholesterol levels when consumed in moderation...with an emphasis on the word "moderation." You may see more beer brewers compete from a nutritional and health standpoint with more "low-calorie," "lower-carbohydrate" and "higher-antioxidant" beer. Could "vitamin beer" be that far away? Here's a Connecticut news segment on the health benefits of beer (again, while consumed in moderation):

Additionally, having such a large industry move towards labeling does increase social pressure on other food and beverage manufacturers to adopt labeling, motivating others to take voluntary steps towards greater labeling. The Brewers’ Voluntary Disclosure Initiative shows that the Beer Institute understands where labeling and nutrition seem to be headed. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) making the first major changes in the Nutrition Facts Label in over 20 years, as described here, and cities such as New York City pushing for more menu labeling seem to be part of a trend rather than just "burps." The Initiative "hops" the beer industry more to the front of this trend and having more input into how things change, rather than being a "chaser" and having to adjust to what is imposed upon them.

Thus, even if you care a lot more about where the beer is than what's in your beer, the Brewers’ Voluntary Disclosure Initiative may impact you. Let that thought ferment for a while...

I’ve been in the worlds of business, medicine, and global and public health. And these worlds are a lot more similar and different than you think. Currently, I am an Associate Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Executiv...